Young women should be encouraged to challenge authority to prevent girls being stereotyped as subservient as they grow up and enter the workplace, it was claimed.

Dr Kevin Stannard, head of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust, which runs 26 schools, said it was common for girls to be praised for good manners, politeness and even neat written work.

But there are concerns that these qualities will not get children ahead in the workplace, where employers place a higher value on personality, networking and the ability to take risks, he suggested.

Currently, girls outperform boys at every stage of the education system, registering better results in primary school exams, GCSEs and A-levels. They are also more likely to go onto university and graduate with a good degree.

But recent figures showed that men earn around 10 per cent more than women.

Last term, pupils from single-sex Wimbledon High School were taught about boasting, self-promotion and celebrating success as part of an innovative “blow your own trumpet week”.

Putney High School – another GDST institution – is proposing to give sixth-formers lessons in improvised comedy and stand-up to boost their risk-taking skills and show them how to “think on their feet”.

Dr Stannard said that other single-sex schools had increasingly promoted debating societies and encouraged pupils to sit tests with “impossible questions” to get them to think in different ways.

For too long, schools have done a “long-term disservice [to girls] by defining their performance in terms of their compliance to expectations of behaviour and work” that seek to reinforce gender stereotypes, he said.

Dr Stannard quoted leading authors who claim that “disruption is a proven path to success”, suggesting that girls learn to “challenge and influence authority”.

“Disruptiveness isn’t, of course, a particularly valued attribute in schools, but it is not so very far from those of resourcefulness, resilience, enterprise, adventurousness, risk-taking, determination, standing up for yourself, leadership and connectivity, which good schools do indeed seek to encourage and develop in girls,” he said.

“It is not just what is taught at school but also how it is taught that is of long-term importance.”